Integrated circuit designers can create logical representations of integrated circuits using hardware definition languages, such as Verilog and VHDL. Synthesis and implementation applications can be used to convert a logical representation of an integrated circuit into a physical representation of the circuit. Such a physical representation can then be used to create a physical chip, or to program a field programmable gate array. Several synthesis and implementation applications allow a chip designer to specify design constraints (such as chip size and clock frequency) that must be satisfied by a physical implementation of the circuit. If the synthesis and implementation application cannot create a physical representation of the circuit that satisfies these constraints, the application usually will not generate a physical representation, and instead may return one or more error messages explaining the failure.